Y(arrow)

Wild the Oracle, December '23

“For comprehending the chaotic diversity of things and exploring what is hidden…there is nothing greater than the oracle”¹

—The Book of Changes

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Last month, I wrote about pulling teeth. This month, I’m starting at the source; I’ve popped cranium from vertebrae and am shaking it all up, letting teeth rattle around like seeds in a gourd.

spect : eyesight :: skept : in-sight

spekt : skept

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Yarrow showed me about these linguistic mirrors; I can’t take credit for them myself, but they’re certainly clever, aren’t they?

Even more so when one realizes they’re like her leaves — yarrow’s — pinnate, alternate, and finely sharp. Perhaps this is Artemis at work; stories say it was she who gave the plant, along with the other artemisias, to Chiron for medicinal use. Chiron, in turn, gave the plant to Achilles, for whom it is named.

Achillea millefollium: the thousand-leaved plant of Achilles. The warrior brought the herb to battle, using it to staunch the wounds of fallen compatriots. Yarrow is known for its ability to slow blood-flow, to quicken the knitting of skin, for its analgesic powers, and for its antimicrobial qualities to prevent infection. Photo by nina . on Unsplash

paroxysm : proxy : apoplexy

no false idols.

They demand sitting with, for all of their divergent meanings to properly unfurl. They must be taken in, ingested. Over the tongue and down the throat, into the belly of the self.

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Believe me or don’t, but this is all emergent. Was it the yarrow which brought the restlessness, or the restlessness which brought the yarrow? I couldn’t say, only that I was bored, that last month’s Wild the Oracle wasn’t quite it, that last month I was only dipping my toes in the water. Now I want to go streaking through the fountain.

I’ve used yarrow before. As a kitchen herb, for colds, fevers. For fighting infection. I made up a tincture in the early autumn, from the dried bundles of yarrow my husband had collected all summer. Diana’s arrow had struck home long before even then. It’s only that the poison lacing the arrow’s tip was slow-acting. Or perhaps it’s as Dale Pendell says: “Once you have an ally, you have to be able to talk to it.”

The plants know I can talk plenty; it’s listening that’s the trick. This time, I’ve written myself into a corner. If I can’t figure out how to listen now, all my dreams are done for.

But if I’m right, then they never were my dreams at all, and this is only the beginning.

What does yarrow want me to write about?